Businesses worldwide recognize the commercial value of their data and seek reliable, cost-effective ways to protect the information stored on their computer networks while minimizing impact on productivity. A company might back up critical computing systems such as databases, file servers, web servers, and so on as part of a daily, weekly, or monthly maintenance schedule. The company may similarly protect computing systems used by each of its employees, such as those used by an accounting department, marketing department, engineering department, and so forth.
In a large company, the number of computing systems to be protected may number in the thousands. Maintaining and upgrading thousands of components may take a toll on the system as a whole. For example, deploying service packs to upgrade each individual component takes up substantial bandwidth, burdens network traffic, causes substantial downtime in the targeted component, and also occupies substantial space in each component's local storage. A more efficient and streamlined approach is needed.